Plant gossips… are almost cotton!

Berry Go Round #36

Welcome to the 36th edition of Berry Go Round. The previous round occured at An Accidental Botanist, and the next will be hosted at the Phytophactor. I wish I had more time to elaborate on the many readings I was offered this month, but January is also the time of flu… So I’ll be shorter than expected. Also, I’d like to promise you a smart bulking of links arranged in topics and alphabetical ranking, but if a bunch or two seems not to follow any classification scheme, that would be for the super hat category.

Here we go…

1.GMODs

GMO is really cool, thematically speaking. Because you could discuss and digress at wish. So we’ll bring back to this purpose. Especially now that you can manage to create your own GMOs at home at fait prices. Yep. This is a saga brought earlier last year, that’ll be resurrected for completness here: DIY Plant Genetic Engineering? –1–2–3.

Then, at least, could somebody create the long expected Superduper weeds? We’re waiting. (Or are we?).

Another side of GMOing on the corner (and not only the corn), it safely brings issues at multiple scales: what if some just want to have normal seeds? (yet let GMOers be happy too). It appears it may not be as easy as it seems: The Holy Grail: find the GMO-free zone.

Okay, apart from being bio high techs, GMO and genomics are not the same, but they often go hand in hand in everyday lab life, so we’ll keep them together (though for simplicity purposes): the lupin is the next plant species whose genome is to be sequenced. Apparently.

I wish I had time to dig it myself, but Plant moss and more has. If we were to create a record book of biology, plants would certainly get most of the prices. This is the story of founding effect, in which a small quantity of migrants will colonize some place, leaving a genetic footprint to the next generations (at least as long as migration is a rare event). A ‘moss’ species managed to colonize a continent from a single haploid individual… 100% peat moss!

Music around plants is probably more frequent than we think. Please discover the Fern rap.

3. Parasites, sex, and how long/far you can trace it back

A conifer parasited. Then sex for ID. Note that Sarcozona could not find a berry but still submitted the post… :)

Pollen grains are cool. Pollen records are telling you many things. Greg tells us about Florida flora and how evidence is not necessarily obvious.

An obituary for G. L. Stebbins. Dobzhanski, Simpson and Mayr and all well known for their role in the emergence of the New Synthesis. So far, I don’t think Stebbins gained as much popularity. Would it be because he was a plant biologist?

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